Word: gestido
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President Pacheco, who succeeded to office from the vice-presidency in 1967 after President Oscar Gestido died, has ruled with almost dictatorial powers since early 1968, when he declared a state of emergency after a series of student and worker strikes. He instituted unlimited search and seizure, froze wages and prices (violators face summary arrest) and imposed press censorship. Motorists are routinely stopped at roadblocks and a Montevidean out for a stroll may be stopped several times with demands that he show his documents. Last July, Congress voted to lift the siege; Pacheco reimposed it a few hours later...
Violent Protests. Pacheco, 48, inherited this situation when he was elevated to his post from the vice-presidency by the sudden death of President Oscar Gestido. A former newspaper editor who relaxes by dropping in on his favorite gym to box, Pacheco opened his campaign for national discipline in a gloves-off spirit. He fired six members of his own Colorado Par ty from their ministerial jobs. Since then, he has replaced all but one man in the twelve-member Cabinet with "good technicians." To halt inflation, which had boosted prices 200% in 18 months and forced five devaluations...
Died. Oscar Diego Gestido, 66, President of Uruguay since last March; of a heart attack; in Montevideo. A former air force general, Gestido was elected to succeed a free-spending nine-man council and save Uruguay from bankruptcy. It seemed a futile hope until October, when soaring inflation and rumors of a coup spurred him to impose a series of stiff reforms, which were greeted by such howls of indignation that he was forced to declare martial...
With his devaluation, Gestido finally did what the International Monetary Fund has been urging him to do for months. In the past, Gestido's economic policy stressed self-help over foreign loans, since help from abroad almost always demands austerity measures. Then last March, he made his first shift in policy and appealed to the IMF for help, austerity or not. "The road of isolationism and internal effort," he said in a televised speech, "is too long, painful and perhaps sterile in today's world." Five of Gestido's eleven Cabinet ministers quickly resigned, and when insults...
Noisy Demonstrators. Uruguay's labor unions reacted so strongly to Gestido's austerity program, going on a series of strikes, that Gestido declared a modified state of siege, prohibiting all calls to strike. Dominated by Communists and encouraged by the huge Soviet embassy in Montevideo-Russia's biggest in Latin America-the 250,000-member National Confederation of Workers last week threatened more strikes. As a starter, 145,000 students, teachers and administrative school personnel went on strike, and 18,000 persons poured into downtown Montevideo for a noisy, anti-government demonstration. If matters...